


The One Less Traveled

by JessaLRynn



Series: Alternating Reality [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clever Rose Tyler, Confessions, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Honest Doctor, Love Confessions, for once in his life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 00:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15674643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: "I'm old," he complained.  "Ancient, even.  Time Lords retire at my point in life, sit around, write their memoirs and complicated treatises that they spend the rest of their lives defending from other old duffers."  He wobbled on his feet, his balance looking as vague as Rose felt.  "An' what'm I doin'?  Wandering around the Vortex tryin' to get meself killed."





	The One Less Traveled

_...and I, I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference._ -Robert Frost

Rose woke and struggled to make sense of the world around her. The Doctor was lying in a crumpled heap against the wall and the TARDIS was moving somewhere. She blinked and stared at him, uncomprehending as the memory of singing tried to make sense of itself in her head. She couldn't grasp it, couldn't fathom it at all.

She shook her head, trying to settle it into some reasonable shape, and the weirdness passed in favor of one simple fact: the Doctor was hurt and he needed her. She forced herself to her feet - _ouch, ouch, **ouch**_ \- and staggered over to where the Time Lord lay, looking more as if he was flung than as if he'd collapsed. "Doctor?" she tried to ask - came out more as a croak, but she cleared her throat and tried again. She wasn't sure she dared lean over to try to touch him. Might just end up sprawled on the floor beside him if she did that, or worse, on top of him, and he didn't look like he could take it at the moment. "Doctor?" she repeated, her voice sounding a bit stronger in her own ears, now.

He didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't make a sound. _Oh god,_ she panicked, _what if he's dead?_ She forced herself to take calming breaths; panicking wouldn't do him any good if he was alive and needed help, and if he was dead, it was too late to panic, really. She leaned over and when that caused her to sway, sharply, she forced herself back against the wall that already supported him and lowered herself slowly to his side. Everything hurt. She touched his shoulder. "Doctor?!" she repeated more firmly. Nothing. 

She stroked his face, and tried again. "Doctor!" This time her voice was insistent - felt like she was demanding he wake up and answer her with every fiber of her being.

He groaned loudly. "Don't do that," he muttered. "Head hurts."

"Sorry," she whispered. She was ready to collapse in a sort of exhausted yet giddy shock. "What happened?"

He raised his head slightly to blink at her, then groaned again and whimpered. His eyes flickered and he sighed, then finally looked at her with a steady blue gaze. "Rose Tyler," he said, his voice fond and proud and awed.

It took too much energy to hold her head up even to see the Doctor so pleased with her, so Rose let it loll back against the wall, peering at the Doctor through eyes that kept drifting closed. It was hard to stay awake, but every time she thought she'd fall asleep, her body gave a dull throb of serious pain. "Doctor. What happened?"

The Doctor gave that odd snort of half-laughter of his, only it didn't seem to have its usual sarcastic flair when she could only see half his face. "What do you remember?" he asked.

"It's like... there was singing."

He nodded slowly, as if his head weighed more than the TARDIS. "That's right," he said. "I sang a song and the Daleks ran away."

"Oh." She blinked. "Did they run over us on their way, 'cuz I don't half ache, here."

"Coulda been my singing," he suggested.

"Daft git," she answered, fondly. "I heard you before, ya know."

"Oi, what's that s'posed to mean?"

"That you sing a lot better than to be able to run a horde of Daleks off with your voice."

He shrugged, then groaned. "I sang Westlife. That'd run off anybody."

Rose could only nod. "Good point," she murmured after a few minutes.

"Feel like dragging yourself up from the floor yet?" he asked a little while later.

"No," she admitted. "You?"

"Nah."

They lay there together for what might have been a couple of hours, really, before the Doctor slowly lifted his head and forced himself to his knees, swearing fluently as he did so.

"Problem?" Rose wondered, following him with lazy eyes.

"I'm old," he complained. "Ancient, even. Time Lords retire at my point in life, sit around, write their memoirs and complicated treatises that they spend the rest of their lives defending from other old duffers." He wobbled on his feet, his balance looking as vague as Rose felt. "An' what'm I doin'? Wandering around the Vortex tryin' to get meself killed."

"Don't say that!" She'd managed to find some energy somewhere, obviously.

"What? I am old, dammit, I can say it if I like."

"No, 'tryin' to get yourself killed'. You can claim you're old if you want, doesn't matter to me in the slightest." She bit her lip over that last, but wasn't about to take it back. "But you're not gonna get yourself killed, I won't let you."

"I noticed," he agreed. He dragged himself to the console, looking at it with bleary eyes and a sort of distant lack of concern. Rose tried to follow suit, but so far all she was managing was to get to her hands and knees.

The Doctor pushed himself off from the console, staggered over to the jump seat, and collapsed into it. Rose crawled the few feet toward him before her hands got fed up with the grill work and she ended up leaning on his legs, crouched at his feet like a beggar. She was gasping for breath from the effort and he wasn't much better, every other breath coming out with a hiss.

Again, they sat. Some time between her head falling back against his leg and his breath finally coming without sound effects, the Doctor lowered a hand to Rose's head and began stroking her hair. She should protest, she knew she should. But it felt so nice, those long, nimble fingers twining through the tangles she used to call hair, finger combing the tresses out ever so gently.

After awhile, because she felt her head getting heavy and her body contemplating sleep again, she forced herself to complain. "'M not your pet, ya know."

He chuckled aloud this time and she felt the sound throughout her body. "Didn't say you were. Though I gotta admit, petting you is lovely."

He couldn't have meant that to sound that way, Rose knew, but she couldn't muster the energy to turn round and see the rueful look and tiny pink tinge that was probably gracing his cheeks and ears. Instead, she just tilted her head closer to his hand and sighed contentedly, whether she would normally do this or not. "Feels nice," she agreed softly. Her pretending circuits had quit, obviously, or possibly passed out from exhaustion.

"Umm," was the noise he made for a reply.

When Rose felt herself just about starting to purr like the pet she really, really wasn't, she turned slightly and, using the Doctor's knees for leverage, slowly jerked herself to her feet. Then, she stood swaying and stared down at him. He was practically pouting. It wasn't a good look for him. Well, it was an intriguing look for him, with his sharply defined and angled face, but it was doing things to her already mucked up head. Just what she needed for him to have found: another look she wanted to kiss off of him.

The Doctor used the chair arms to force himself slowly to his feet and swayed almost as sharply as Rose did when he got there. She wondered if one of them was going to fall down. She wondered if the other would be in any state to catch the one who fell if they did.

"God, what the hell happened to us?"

"Massive power transfer. Long story, I'll tell you later. Right now, I think we need sleep."

Sleep. That sounded better than sex and chocolate pancakes, right now.

"No, trust me, sex is better, most o' the time," the Doctor said. "Not so sure about chocolate pancakes, though."

"I said that aloud," Rose mused. For some reason, her body still couldn't even find the energy to blush.

"Or thought it really loudly, I s'pose," the Doctor suggested. "C'mon, bed."

"What room's the closest?" she wondered. "Not sure I can get far."

"Me either," he admitted. "I'll just drop you at your door."

Panic flooded her veins like ice water, a surge of adrenaline that gave her the strength to reach for him and cling to his hand like a lifeline. "Don't leave me," she pleaded. For some reason, she was absolutely terrified. She just knew something horrible would happen. If she lost sight of him for even one hair's breadth of an instant, she would never see him again, she was sure of it.

"I won't leave you, Rose Tyler," the Doctor promised solemnly, squeezing her hand, and her energy surge was spent. 

They both stood there, contemplating the miles and miles of console room (three whole feet: it was an impossible distance) from here to the corridor. "Lean on me," the Doctor said.

"An' who'll you lean on?" she wondered.

"You," he answered. "And then, if we fall down, at least we'll fall down together."

Rose half-nodded, a smile appearing slowly. "Better with two," she agreed.

The door they eventually staggered to and through, after pausing for breath and gasps and nearly loosing their balance more than once, didn't lead to her room. It didn't even lead to his, but to another room that the Doctor was obviously every bit as surprised about as Rose was.

"Looks like Odysseus," Rose commented.

The Doctor nodded, taking in the bed frame that appeared to have been grown and woven from the TARDIS coral, just like in the control room. Rose smiled to notice that he was gaping at it like it had fallen in from the sky. It was nice to have someone to dribble on her shirt with, really. 

The bed was more like a bower than a bed, some sort of fairy-tale circular affair of inviting fluff and coverlet and haphazardly scattered pillows. Had she been able to summon the strength, or any strength at all, Rose would have flung herself on it to test the glorious plushiness with her weary body.

Then, the Doctor did a double-take. "You read Homer?" he asked. "S'that what you hide behind your silly magazines?"

_Oops._ Rose was almost annoyed that she still couldn't manage to blush. "Not always," she defended.

"All this time," he grumbled, shaking his head slowly, "I thought you were hiding trashy romance novels or something, an' you've been reading classics. Rose Tyler, what'm I gonna do with you?"

"Anything you like."

He blinked at her. She blinked at him. They both shrugged and looked away, and Rose supposed he'd put it down as exhaustion, just as she had. She was usually able to stop this truth stuff falling out of her mouth, after all. Distracting confessions seemed to be in order, though, just in case. "I like to read," she admitted. "I just..." There was so much emotion that she didn't have the strength to feel at the moment caught up in that fact, so she just squeezed his hand. "I'll tell ya later, all right? It don't matter now. You said we needed sleep."

"Right, sleep," the Doctor agreed. He glanced down at the deep pile of dark crimson carpeting. "I could sleep here," he admitted.

"Me too," Rose decided. Despite how much she ached, she could feel how soft the carpet was under her feet. "Still, bed, just over there."

"Right."

Again, the enormity of the distance was too terrible to contemplate. "My jacket weighs about fifty stone," the Doctor commented. 

An indeterminate eternity wandered aimlessly by them. They both watched it go with vague and shaky indifference. Rose finally dredged up the strength to shove lightly at the Doctor's jacket when he began fiddling with the buttons. He shrugged his shoulders back, let his arms go straight, and it fell to the floor as if it indeed weighed fifty stone, just like he said. It even made an enormous dull thud as it hit the ground.

The Doctor seemed to lighten without it holding him down. He shot Rose a weak, sideways version of his brilliant grin before stumbling over and collapsing onto the bed.

"Oi," Rose protested mildly. "Shoes."

He held up a booted foot, chuckling lightly. "You wan' 'em off, take 'em off." It was scarcely a mumble, his voice low and thick with accent and weariness.

Rose contemplated his boots while she toed off her trainers. "Bugger it," she muttered and collapsed next to him. The Doctor was still chuckling in her ear when her consciousness decided to go out for a breath of fresh air and leave her sprawled in his arms across their new bed.

*?*

Sometime along about three hours later (his time sense having finally reasserted itself), the Doctor woke in the sultry half-darkness. Rose was balled up, fetal position, at his side, and whimpering. He laid a hand on her shoulder, stroking gently to soothe her nightmares.

She cried out suddenly, in fear or in pain he didn't know, but he raised himself up on a elbow to lean over her, whisper soothingly in her ear. "I'm here, Rose. You're safe. I've got you."

Her eyes flew open and she turned abruptly, flattening him into the airy bedding as she flung herself into his embrace, clutching desperately. "Don't leave me. My Doctor, don't. Please, don't..."

Any other words she might have said were incoherent. "I've got you," he promised. "Not gonna leave you, precious girl, not ever." He stroked her hair and repeated himself softly until she finally slipped again, this time into a properly restful sleep. He slowly disentangled them and slipped from their bed.

Their bed.

He chuckled ruefully at himself as he hunted around to find out if this room had an en suite or if he needed to rearrange the architecture to borrow the nearest loo. Their bed, indeed. 

_You're losing it, old man._

He didn't know what the TARDIS had made this room for, odd and rather homey place that it was, but he rather doubted She'd gone to all this trouble just because his stupid domestic fantasies had often been plagued with the idea of Rose sharing his bed or him sharing hers. He'd rarely seen a more elaborately beautiful but practical place, especially not in his TARDIS, where all the oddities and bonuses were usually quirks that he loved and kept. He was too tired to think about it now, really. He just found the en suite - it was another work of art he didn't have the presence of mind to contemplate just now - and took care of the most pressing business.

He washed his hands, washed his face, smiling at his own daft old reflection. Good to still see that face there. He'd thought for several long, subjective years that Rose was going to wake up to find a stranger wearing his clothes. He seemed to remember a struggle and a decision, and looking forward at his own time lines. He couldn't remember what he saw at the time and it was better that way, but he was sure now that it had definitely involved cheating the hell out of death, and not in the usual way.

The Doctor plunked down on a padded, velvet upholstered, straight-backed chair. _Stupid Time Lord furniture_. Wrestling his heavy boots from his feet took more strength than he was comfortable with at the moment, but they had to go. Rose didn't want them there, as he remembered. 

He arranged them neatly under the chair with her trainers next to them. She'd apparently toed them off, as she was wont to do in almost any room, much to his usual annoyance and occasional amusement. He mostly didn't think about it, but when it annoyed him, it annoyed him. Truly, though, she wasn't as messy as she could have been, Rose, given the disarray of her room back on the Estate. Besides, she was exhausted this time, so he'd never want to bother her.

As he shed his jumper and under shirt, the Doctor realized he was too tired to even contemplate hunting down anything that resembled proper sleeping clothes. He did take off his belt, hanging it over the back of the chair that he really could have done without. It was like he had regeneration sickness, only worse because he knew he shouldn't. It was also better at the same time, because at least he wasn't hallucinating. He knew who Rose was, though he found himself doubting that he would have forgotten her, even for a hearts-beat, even if he regenerated a half-dozen times. Not that he had a half-dozen regenerations left. Well, actually, with the Matrix gone and nothing to draw him out of functional reality, he supposed he would probably regenerate indefinitely. 

Oh, _joy_.

He already knew he didn't want to live without Rose. He'd thought, known a little, really, that what he did to remove the Time Vortex from her would - should, he supposed - have meant that he would die there on her lips. But whatever happened afterward, and for all his genius and his near-perfect memory he couldn't recall it, it had changed things.

He struggled to the nestled cradle that was the very organic-looking bed and flopped dramatically onto the mattress. No one was here to see him make a complete show of it, so the Doctor didn't bother to forestall his natural impulse to groan and complain profanely under his breath. No matter how many regenerations he went through, it was one of a few habits that never changed - he always, always, had to make a spectacle of himself, even when there was no audience, and even if the type of spectacle varied. The thought made the Doctor realize he'd need to tell Rose about this when she woke up: this had been far, far too close a call.

She cuddled up to his side as the bed sank beneath his weight, naturally nesting the pair of them into the center. He shrugged and very gently coaxed her out of her pink hoodie, since the string was in her mouth and the hood was pulling the whole shirt up over her head. She would be more comfortable without it, the Doctor was sure. He told himself firmly that it was not his place if it gave him the opportunity to touch more of her skin.

After shoving the hoodie to the floor, he tugged Rose close to him, fitting her just so into the curve of his body. She was a perfect fit, too, like their bodies had been sculpted together to match exactly like this, her head tucked under his chin, his arm wrapped round her waist. It was who they were together, the solution to the puzzle of his life: The Doctor had always been a bit broken before, and Rose somehow completed him.

Well, but that was true, no matter how he looked at it, and right now all he could look at was warmth and drowsiness and the subtle perfume of her skin. He sighed contentedly and inhaled the wonder of her, and closed his eyes.

*

Rose woke to the rather startling realization that she wasn't dreaming. She was sure she had been, that she and the Doctor had dragged themselves here to this oddly organic room and flung themselves down on this lovely, alien bed. That they'd found themselves too exhausted to remove their clothes or even contemplate any sort of modesty or shyness over the sleeping arrangements seemed impossible to fit into their reality. 

But here they were. The room was dark and there were stars above them, a vibrant, lazy drift of tiny bright pinpoints shimmering where Rose thought there might have been a ceiling before. She was awake, and there was a doubled throb against her back, his hearts as they beat, strong and steady counter-point to her own human single rhythm. His hand splayed across her stomach like a star and, she noticed distractedly, it was under her shirt, not on it. Also, the hoodie she was reasonably certain she'd been wearing was missing. 

She smiled. He'd told her before that if she wanted his boots gone she'd have to take them off. He must have decided he wanted her hoodie gone. She didn't half love him and if that wasn't proof, she didn't know what was. He had the most aggravating habit of assuming what was good for her, and though it sometimes nearly got him killed, it usually just irritated her. Sometimes it amused her instead, though. Still, she supposed one day she'd have to work up the energy to get really righteously pissed off at him. She wondered idly if she could be that offended at being helped out of some of her clothes and did a quick inventory. As usual, he'd only gone so far as to make her more comfortable. Maybe she should be offended by that.

Rose brushed his hand and it tightened, tugging her closer to him. He murmured something, a low, chiming, singing note of his native language. She whispered, softly, "I'll be right back," and tugged herself from his embrace.

The Doctor muttered and complained and his hands moved across the covers, reaching for comfort or her or, for all Rose knew, his teddy bear. She bit her lip over the idea of the Doctor with a teddy bear and went to find the loo and get cleaned up a little.

There were night clothes for her hanging from the back of the bathroom door, along with her favorite dressing gown. Her slippers were just outside the door, so she put them on as well and padded back to the bed. With some surprise, she noted that the Doctor was awake, looking rather frantic. "What's wrong?" she asked as she shed her robe and climbed back into the bed. 

"Nothing, now," he said, and pulled her to him. A brighter but still very faint and gentle light suffused the area.

She blushed profusely as their bodies molded together, her head on his bare chest, his arms around her back. "What is it?" he asked, and she supposed he must have felt her blush, which gave her something else to blush about, really.

"We fit," she blurted out.

"We do," he agreed with a dark chuckle that set her heart to racing. "Never noticed how well, before, what with usually being vertical and everything."

How long they lay there, Rose would never know. The Doctor could probably tell her to the nanosecond, or he would tell her that it didn't really matter, what with it being a time machine. What she did know was that she had never been more comfortable in her entire life, wrapped in the Doctor's arms, in their bed.

Their bed.

The flannel shorts and tank top were way too hot for her, as the blush stained her skin everywhere. Her mind had raced to a few places she was sure she'd never get to live.

_Dream on, little girl._

She forced herself not to do that, actually, dreaming and imagining, and settled on thinking about their adventures instead. She usually did that after trips with the Doctor, sorted through events and filed them all...

"Where's Jack?" she demanded in a sudden panic. "Is he... where is..."

The Doctor sighed heavily. "He stayed behind, Rose. There's a whole planet to rebuild there, you know."

"Doctor..." She paused and chewed at her lip. He wouldn't lie to her, not about something that important. Jack was important to the pair of them and the Doctor had even let Jack kiss him, surely he wouldn't... She took a deep breath and forced the tears to stay still. "He didn't even say goodbye," she said, and she tried not to make it sound choked.

"You might see him again, Rose," the Doctor said gently. "Probably. There wasn't time."

Then, she was crying and the Doctor was soothing her with comforting hands and, strangely enough, apologizing. She would have wondered why, except that this was the Doctor and he always thought it was his fault. Another of those subjective eternities passed while she calmed down and let the conviction that Jack would be all right wash over her. She'd see their friend again, just like the Doctor said. They just couldn't go get him until they were in any shape to run, that was all.

"We need to talk," the Doctor suggested.

Rose stiffened again, and just when she'd started to relax. "Yeah?" she asked, warily, wondering how much heart-break they were about to cause each other. In Rose's experience, nothing good ever started with "We need to talk".

"Yeah," he said, "because we had the closest call we've ever had today, an' you need ta know something about Time Lords in case it ever comes to that again."

And then, slowly, warily, haltingly, the Doctor told her that he could change his face, change his whole body. Rose had trouble even imagining something like that. It seemed impossible, incredible. All the same, she was strangely relieved, because a part of her had been convinced, despite everything, that he would tell her that it was over, that it was high time she quit wasting his time and went back to her mother. She'd rather hear any number of alien facts of life than have to try to go back to her old life, especially now that she knew she couldn't. Just to make sure her concentration was completely shot to hell, her body reminded her every few words that there was a half-dressed Doctor in bed with her, one who had his hand up the back of her t-shirt, stroking the bare skin between her shoulder blades from time to time.

"So, I just thought you should..." For the first time since he started talking, the Doctor met her eyes. He looked worried and frightened at first, and then he got this look like her teachers at school, when she was wishing she was anywhere but there. He frowned, and Rose reached out to touch the frown without even thinking about it. "Actually," he said, shaking his head, "have you paid attention to a word I've said?"

Rose blinked guiltily up into the blue eyes that somehow managed to look merry and stern at the same time, then glanced at her hand, trying to figure out what it thought it was doing. She squared her shoulders, even though she was horizontal, and repeated what she'd heard. "You can change your face; it's a Time Lord thing. I got that. You don't die, you change. Think I get that, too. But you said it was a really close call today?"

"Yeah, I probably should have actually regenerated, but I didn't."

"Why not?" she wondered.

The Doctor frowned, again, looking strangely introspective to Rose's fascinated eyes. "There's a lot of technical answers I could give you, ya know."

She nodded. "Wouldn't understand a word of any of 'em."

The Doctor grinned, then, that bright, brilliant grin that snatched her heart and her breath and everything else. She could cheerfully live her life on that grin, she knew that now. "You'd be amazed what you'll understand, Rose Tyler. Often am, meself. Not easy ta surprise, ya know, me."

She grinned back, couldn't help it. "That's jus' cuz you've seen everything."

"Not everything," he countered softly.

She didn't want to put him in a mood, so she kept up the banter. "Oh, come on, Doctor. Nine hundred years and... how many faces?"

"Nine. This is my eighth regeneration."

"Are there pictures?" she teased.

The Doctor gave her a mock-serious look, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Oi, d'ya mind? I'm trying to be serious here. Sharin' my secrets an' all."

"Now I'm gonna go looking for them!" she said. "You were disco once, weren't you?"

He laughed, an honest, carefree, happy laugh. "Much worse," he promised her.

"You'll have to show me some time," she threatened.

"Tell you what, you go looking." 

He looked so smug Rose knew he'd gotten whatever he had locked up tighter than Villengard. Still, if he could get in there, she could get into whatever it was. So Rose nodded, and went back to her earlier point. "So you must have seen all the amazing things worth seeing."

He chuckled lightly and his hand on her back lowered to the small dip just above her bum. One finger drew light, shivering circles around it. "Not always." 

To avoid giving herself and her desire away, Rose ducked her head. She smiled against his chest, and fought with more strength than she was comfortable needing to keep from planting a kiss against the skin so near her mouth. "Do you remember the things you've done and seen from life to life?"

"Most of the time. Some times I lose everything but the important stuff."

"What important stuff?" she wondered. She didn't want to just come right out and ask him what was truly bothering her. It was too hard to ask, what with neither of them ever having dared say it at all before. 

He brought his hand away from her back, trailing it slowly until he reached her waist, then lifting it to cup her cheek, making her look up at him again. Rose wondered if he knew that this was why she couldn't concentrate. "The TARDIS, mostly. And how I feel about things. Hate guns, fight evil, that sort of thing. I've occasionally forgotten who 'the Doctor' is, but I never seem to forget what I do." He tilted his head back, his eyes in shadow. "Well, sometimes." He met her eyes again, the expression so serious Rose couldn't doubt him. "I wouldn't forget you, Rose. I know that's what's worried you. But you're the important stuff."

She lay silent as she tried to take that in, while his blue eyes watched her with such open, beautiful honesty. "How did we really get away from the Daleks?" she asked after awhile.

He lay back against the blankets and stared up at the night sky wheeling over head. "You," he admitted after awhile. "You came back and saved us from the Daleks, and then I saved you."

"Like a prince in a fairy tale," she mused. "I thought I imagined that. But... you kissed me, didn't you?"

He turned toward her, that small, soft smile on his face, the one she saw so rarely, she sometimes believed it was only for her. "'You are the most beautiful girl that has ever lived, and it is worth dying to have kissed you.'" She could tell from his inflection that he was quoting someone, but the look in his eyes said he meant every word.

"You didn't die, though," she said, icy fear stealing her heart from her chest and leaving a ball of frozen lead in its place. "You're not gonna now, are you?"

The Doctor shook his head, then sat up. Carefully, he tugged her into his lap, held her like a priceless treasure. "I was dyin' when I met you, Rose Tyler." His voice caressed her name as it had always done, made it sound precious and important, made it seem worth so much more than her life had ever let on without him. "An' to have kissed you was worth more than that. So much more than dyin' for." He leaned in close, pressed their foreheads together, spoke like night whispering secrets to the moon. "Kissing you, my Rose, is worth living for."

He was looking so deeply into her eyes that she was sure he could read the secret writing on her soul. She wondered if he saw his name there, if he knew that his home was there, too, if only he wanted it. Slowly, not daring to break eye contact, not wanting to relinquish any iota of his touch, she nodded. She licked her lip, and smiled as the lower periphery of her vision told her he was copying her action. "My Doctor," she whispered, and caressed his face with a hand she would not allow to be idle again for more than a moment. "Let's live."

It wasn't their first kiss, the one that had saved her life and nearly cost him his. It wasn't a last kiss, like their first one might should have been. Nevertheless, it was a next kiss and, like all the kisses that they would share after it, it became a paving stone of the gracefully bejeweled road to their forever.


End file.
